Cookbooks - the good, the bad, the absolutely must-have

When I first got married, I discovered that my prowess as a baker was not going to put dinner on the table. And suddenly, it seemed unacceptable to eat cereal (or pie) for dinner. Since my husband did not seem able to produce a meal without a menu and a phone, I decided I'd better learn to cook more than stir-fry and salad. My very best friend became Mark Bittman's "How to Cook Everything".  The book lives up to its name. I've often bought a new cut of meat or an unusual vegetable at the store or farmer's market, come home and looked it up and sure enough, Mark can tell you how to cook it up in a tasty fashion. He can also tell you how to make a poached egg, bread, soup, chocolate chip cookies and curry. If you are suddenly called upon to cook Thanksgiving dinner - Mark will cover it for you. He's simple, he's clear, and he's encyclopedic.
Since the right cookbook can help inspire you, I'll continue to go over my favorite cookbooks, and I've already gotten some suggestions on new ones from friends. But I'm out of time for today. In the meantime let me know what your go-to cookbooks are.
XOXO Christina

Be not afraid of lamb

Ever since I had a baby old enough to crawl, the idea of Rachael Ray's "30 minutes" seemed laughable.  Not just targeting Rachael Ray here, but it seems all thirty minute recipes are designed for thirty minutes of hands on time. When you've got little kids, that is just way too long. This is where grilling can become very helpful. However, I live in Manhattan. We don't have outdoor space to put a grill. And the genius who designed my kitchen neglected to add a ventilation system.  Every time I broil something the smoke alarm goes off, and it is very difficult to convince the alarm that it's services are unnecessary. However, I persist in using it, as there are days when you have to get the dinner on the table in just a few minutes. (And a damp towel hung over the smoke detector can be a good foil). Now, instead of using your grill for burgers and dogs, or your broiler for steak, why don't you try lamb? I must admit that lamb is shockingly expensive. But actually, because the loin chops have such a small amount of meat, it's great for little kids because the portion size of one chop is really nearly perfect. So if you are at Costco one day, or see it on sale, do try this. My 2 and 4 year old actually love it, which is almost as shocking as the sticker price on the meat package.
Here's my very favorite marinade for Lamb Chops.  It is fast and so delicious.  The lemon really added a lot of flavor and zip. The best thing is you only need to marinate this for a short period- or you can let it soak all day.

You need:
3 lemons
1/4 cup olive oil
1 tablespoon dried thyme or rosemary. They are both delicious, but have a different flavor
3-4 cloves of garlic, minced (depending on how much you love garlic)
8 lamb loin chops. Try to buy them a similar thickness. It is much easier to cook them that way. You'll probably need at least 2 chops per adult, one per small child.
salt and pepper

Don't use a metal dish to marinate. Use ceramic or glass. Squeeze the lemons into the dish, adding the olive oil, garlic and spice. Season the chops with salt and pepper. Put them in the marinade, turn them over and spoon the sauce over to coat. Pop back the refrigerator to marinate, or if you are short on time, you can let them soak at room temperature for an hour.

Preheat your grill or broiler. If the chips are about an inch thick, and cook for about 5 minutes a side for medium rare, or 6 minutes per side for medium. Yay!

Enjoy! Christina

PS. I also tried this the other day on turkey tenderloin. It was great.

Hurricane Cuisine - Pasta with Cupboard Sauce

Personally, I am relishing the opportunity to spend two days inside, with a terrifying wind howling around my apartment while my children alternate between desperately hanging on me in fear of the wind, and bored out of their minds. Hurricanes are fun! Since I'm fairly certain we New Yorkers will be spending some time "electricity free", it's time to think about what you can cook from non-perishables. And I HATE canned soup, so that's out. One of my suggestions is to make a dish I'm going to dub "Pasta with Cupboard Sauce". Everything is from your pantry. Basically, start with:
- your favorite brand of pasta sauce
- a box of pasta (You probably have one in there. But I don't have a case of whole wheat pasta purchased at Costco last month for no reason. I would never do that.)
- a jar of marinated artichokes (might have to pick this up)
- a jar of sliced mushrooms
- a can black olives.
Just drain the various jars and add the to the pasta sauce (I only use a handful of olives, but the whole jar of artichokes and mushrooms) and warm up the sauce. Cook the pasta and add the Cupboard Sauce. It's surprisingly tasty, especially if you add Parmesan. This recipe is also great for those desperate days when you never made it to the supermarket.  Anybody got other ideas for hurricane meals?

Ingredients sold in large quantities, but used in small quantities

Sometimes food companies have got you where they want you. Take tomato paste, for example. Most recipes only call for a little dab of tomato paste- 1 or 2 tablespoons. And yet you have to open the whole freaking can to get that itsy bit out, and then you leave it open in the fridge for 3 months before you need tomato paste again, at which point it has become a brick with an odd white fluffy blanket of microbes over it. I've tried the tomato paste in a tube, which is an improvement in terms of use of use, but I still end up wasting most of it.  My friend Andrea gave me a great tip on how to make the most of it. She says, to open both ends of the can and pop it in freezer for about 30 mins. When it solidifies a bit, push out paste and cut into 1 tablespoon servings. Wrap it up and place in freezer for future use. I like this tip because it also makes the paste a little easier to deal with. I hate it when the paste sticks to the spoon, and then half the paste is on the spoon and half is on the knife you used to scrape it off with, so then you need another knife to scrape that part off, and then you are still unsure if enough paste actually made it into the pot. Same thing goes with fresh ginger, according to my cousin Elizabeth. Peel the whole root, and pop it in the freezer. Then you can use a small grater the next time you need some ginger. Awesome!

Banana Mania

Do you constantly have banana emergencies? Maybe you have no bananas, green bananas, or god forbid, bananas with brown spots that are deemed diseased, cursed and untouchable.  If you are in the later situation by some misfortune, I have a Banana Bread recipe for you. My kids love to help make it, which can also turn this into a rainy day activity. Even a very small child can mash the bananas for you, and they love to crack eggs with your help. I usually make this in a loaf format, but you can bake it into muffins if you reduce the cooking time to about 20-25 minutes. Sometimes I make the muffins and pop them in the freezer for consumption on a later date!
This is a great breakfast treat if you have kid that won't eat any breakfast foods and is hysterical by 10am every day. Not that I know any kids like that.
You need:
8 Tblsps of unsalted butter (1 stick). Helps if it is room temperature
3/4 cups granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 cup unbleached all purpose flour, and 1 cup whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon baking sode
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 large (overripe) bananas
1 tsp real vanilla extract
1/4 cup to 1/2 cup mini chocolate chips (optional, sort of). You can do nuts or raisins instead
I also like to add a half cup of shredded coconut.

1. Grease a 9x5x3 inch bread pan, and preheat the oven to 350F. Kids are good at greasing.
2. Whip out your Kitchenaid mixer. If you don't have one, just get out whatever sort of beaters you have.
Cream the butter and sugar until fluffy. Kids love to watch this. Then, carefully crack the eggs one at a time. Pick the eggshells out of the mixture. Because you know you let one get in there.
3. I'm sure I should tell you to sift together the flour, baking soda, and salt, and fold it into the mixture. But I'm a realist. Nobody does that in real life. Just get it all in there.
4. Fold in the mashed bananas and vanilla and chocolate chips/nuts/coconut or raisins.
5. Put it into the pan and show to the children so they can oooh and ahh at the difference when it comes out.
Bake for about 50-60 minutes. It's a easy to take it out too early, so look to see that the sides are pulling away from the edges and put a cake tester in the middle to make sure it's not gooey. Actually you probably don't have a cake tester. I don't. Stick a fork or a meat skewer or a toothpick or whatever you've got in there to determine if it is still gooey. Cool in the pan for 10 minutes, and then on a rack if you can fight the kids off for that long. Enjoy!

Roasted Chicken Leftovers

One of the main weapons in my arsenal is rotisserie chicken. How awesome is rotisserie chicken? Relatively healthy, easy and comforting. If, one day, you are lucky enough to have at least a half a chicken left, you can try this. The following recipe was originally inspired by my ambitious, glossy and mouthwatering Williams Sonoma slow cooker recipe book. However, it took on a life of it's own as I realized I did not have 3 hours for simmering. I had maybe 30 minutes before someone took me out if dinner wasn't ready. So, as my two year old threw herself repeatedly against my leg screaming, "I want MILK!", I managed to concoct this little dish. I couldn't believe it- but it was scarfed down by my husband and kids. I ate it daintily.

Ingredient list:
Leftover roasted chicken- at least a half chicken is best
1 Tblsp olive oil
1 carrot
1  stalk of celery
1 small yellow onion
1 cup of white wine for the recipe, 2 cups for drinking
1 cup chicken broth
1 tsp of dried tarragon
1 bay leaf
1 lb dried pappardelle
3/4 cup heavy cream
salt and pepper
Parmesan cheese
lemon zest (optional)


Here's what you do:
Heat up a big sauce pan with about 1 tblsp of olive oil.
Chop up 1 carrot, 1 stalk of celery, and one small yellow onion as fast as you can without cutting any children or fingers.
Throw into pan and let aromas invade the room as you saute for 5 minutes or so, and stir.
Add 1 cup of white wine and 1 cup of chicken broth. Stir and let come to a boil, then reduce the heat.
Chop up remaining chicken into little pieces. Throw into pan.
Add about 1 tsp or more to taste of tarragon, to taste. Add one bay leaf. Simmer, uncovered, hopefully for about 30 minutes. This allow the mixture to reduce and soak into the chicken.
In the meantime, bring a large pot to boil, salt it, and cook 1 lb of pappardelle, which is a thick, ribbon like pasta that I love (although linguine works too).
Now, add 3/4 cup of heavy cream to the sauce and let it simmer for about 5 minutes to thicken it.  Add salt and pepper.  If you are ambitious, add the zest of one lemon. If you are tired, skip it. Drain the pasta, incorporate the sauce, and add Parmesan cheese to taste. YUM!
P.S. I know this has the dreaded heavy cream in it. My firm belief is that whatever else they would eat in a restaurant would be way worse. Seriously.

Don't worry, I'm here

So here's the last thing you need at the end of the day. You've been up since 5.30am, picking toys off the floor, and wrangling kids whose main occupation in life is to provide amazingly effective resistance to whatever you are trying to do. Or you picked a bunch of toys up off the floor before racing out the door and then spent 8 hours trying to navigate the latest non-issue invented by your overly driven co-workers.  And now, instead of heading to happy hour and throwing back a few drinks and eating the free appetizers as "dinner"...well, you need to cook. For said reluctant, non-real-food eating toddlers, dainty self, ravenous teenagers or whatever other motley crew is inhabiting your house around 6pm. Cooking used to be fun. Maybe it can be that way again. I'm going to try and help. Some days, I might have a really good tip. Other days, I might have a tasty recipe. Or I might just provide sympathy, because sometimes that's all a mom needs.